The Openreach Data and Insight (ODI) team has been named winner of Best Data and AI Team at the 2025 DataIQ Awards. In just two years, this 50-strong group has reshaped how Openreach harnesses data: reducing complexity, accelerating insight, and delivering measurable business impact worth hundreds of millions of pounds.
Formed by uniting analysts, engineers, scientists, and strategists across five UK sites and India, the ODI was designed with intent. In addition to being a delivery function, the team includes a dedicated data strategy unit ensuring that every technical effort is tied back to a clear vision for how data and AI fuel Openreach’s future.
“With strong deliverables and drastic reductions in costs, waste, and time, the culture built here should be the target for other organisations to achieve.” – Judges’ comments
Data at Scale, Delivered with Pace
Openreach is a business with vast and complex data estates, with over 300 billion rows across 140 systems. Over the past year, the ODI has led the organisation’s largest-ever data transformation, migrating critical assets from on-premise to the cloud. By consolidating and re-designing dashboards and reports, the team reduced duplication, improved processing speeds, and avoided a like-for-like migration that would have simply moved inefficiencies into a new environment.
All of this was done while maintaining business-as-usual reporting and education for non-technical colleagues, ensuring the organisation could keep making informed decisions without interruption.
Measurable Business Impact
The ODI has delivered tangible results across multiple business areas:
- Reporting simplification: Cut the number of reports by 60%, reducing the time staff spend searching for the right insight.
- Cost savings: Delivered £34m by identifying overlooked homes for fibre connection, and a further £75m projected over five years through workforce optimisation.
- Operational efficiency: Underpinned the award-winning Rubix programme, contributing to a 25% reduction in ethernet operational costs (FY21–25).
- Generative AI adoption: Established a steering group to streamline engineering notes, reducing manual desk work.
- Environmental gains: Insights for the Fleet team have reduced fuel consumption by up to 5,000,000 litres of diesel and cut 15,000 tonnes of CO2, advancing Openreach’s goal to reach net zero by 2031.
A Team Built for the Future
What makes the ODI distinctive is not only the breadth of its technical capabilities but the culture underpinning them. Engagement is embedded into the operating model, with dedicated champions at every site, peer-led learning opportunities, and an annual impact report to showcase achievements across the business. This has built a sense of belonging and pride, even in a hierarchical organisation like Openreach.
The DataIQ judges noted that the ODI team has combined ambition with delivery: transforming legacy systems, embedding AI responsibly, and creating a structure where strategy, delivery, and engagement reinforce each other.
Looking Ahead
For Openreach, the ODI team is both a driver of today’s results and an enabler of tomorrow’s growth. With foundations in place, the team is focused on deepening expertise, expanding AI adoption, and raising data literacy across the organisation.
Openreach demonstrated to the judges what a modern data and AI team should be: strategically aligned, operationally effective, and culturally connected with impact measured in real business outcomes, not just dashboards delivered.
